Light.
Holy crap, light.
I never paid much attention to it before, beyond using it to understand the world around me a little bit. See, sound is more my thing. I've been taking mostly music classes for the past couple of years, so I tend to snuggle up in the auditory region of my brain. I know more than just music, too. I took a class about microphones once, it was awesome. We learned about how certain materials absorb different frequencies of noise (as in, if a sound is high or low), which is why a room with all flat surfaces is echoey (because very little gets absorbed, so instead it reflects), and a heavily carpeted room sounds claustrophobic (because the high notes get absorbed), things like that. From this, I know that all materials have a different "sweet spot," everything absorbs sound at a certain frequency, and conversely, everything has a frequency that it "likes" which it will vibrate along with. Like, if I had two guitars, tuned identically, and I struck one of the strings, the same string on the other guitar would vibrate as well. In fact, even if I had just one guitar, and I struck one string, then muted it, the other strings would still be ringing along with the note. It's really cool stuff. (this is the condensed version of "Things Penny Likes About Sound." I'm trying to keep it chill for the non-obsessed, slightly less geeky audience)
Well, here's the thing. Light? It's a wave, too (yes, I know it's also a particle, but I haven't wrapped my brain around that yet, so we'll ignore that for right now). I know, I've seen it a million times, but it never really struck me. People always told me "you don't see color, you see light bouncing off of the object, and whatever light it doesn't absorb is what you see," and ever since I was a little kid, I was like "You make no sense. What the heck are you talking about? If the thing is not colored, then why does it have a color? I'm going back to reading about wizards in England. At least that stuff has some form of logic." Well, not completely like that, but you get the idea.
But today, in class, I heard/saw for the fifty-billionth time, that light is waves, and that color is whatever doesn't get absorbed by the object when light hits it. And then it hit me. Light. Sound. They're both waves. They're both waves. They behave the same way. Materials that will either reflect, absorb, or transfer the waves that hit them. Materials that will often alter the waves that hit them, giving the observer a better understanding of what that material is composed of. Like how I can tell how a box is empty or full, just by listening to it, or how I can tell that a glass of water is dirty, just by looking at it.
They're all just different waves from the same spectrum.
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| Taken from this website that I didn't really read, so I don't know if it's good |
Do you know what this means to me? It means that we hear stuff with our eyes. Holy crap. This is so cool.
And do you know what else is cool? Light has always been a huge mystery to me. Like, I know that it is, but I don't know why it is. Seriously, why? Why, when I start a chain reaction of energy transferences (I'm making up terms, now), such as burning a candle (turning wax and string into heat and light), or completing an electrical circuit, where one part of the circuit is made of extremely thin wire, do I get light? Why not just heat? I understand heat. Heat is energy. When I start a chemical reaction, energy is either released or absorbed. I get that. But I always wanted to know what the heck light is, where does it come from, and why is it here?
Seriously. These kinds of questions keep me up at night. I wondered this about a decade ago, and I haven't been the same, since.
But I get it now. Eureka, I freaking get it now. We're just hearing with our eyes. We're hearing energy, waves, with our eyes. See, higher frequency means higher energy, that's why fire (and other hot things that produce light) can hurt us, because when we come in contact with it, the energy hits our particles so hard that they move. Sound doesn't hurt us (not unless it's really, really loud, and even then, it's just our sensitive sensory organs that get damaged) because it doesn't take as much energy to produce. But it's all waves. Light isn't just this alien thing, it's just part of a spectrum--a really, really small part. I feel like it's just one octave: with sound, it goes A1B1C1D1E1F1G1A2B2C2D2E2F2G2A3B3C3D3E3F3G3 and so on, repeating over and over, but with color, it's only the one octave: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Ohmygoshholycrapohmygoodness do you see what I see? It's seven. SEVEN. As in it actually is an octave. Do you realize what this means? This is why certain colors go together, and certain ones don't, just like certain tones go together, and certain ones don't.
LOOKATTHISPICTURE.
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| Stolen from this seriously awesome website that you should check out, there's lots of pictures |
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| Seriously, you should go to this website and check it out |
In my ponderings, I wondered what it would be like, if we could perceive the entire spectrum. We would hear color, we would see heat and energy in octaves. We could hear FM and AM radio waves, see gamma rays. Oh, my goodness, is that cool, or what?
Looking at the rainbow, and how there are seven colors, it leads me to my issue with indigo. It kind of bugs me. Whenever I see indigo, I always say "that's purple," or, "that's deep blue." I never saw it as a separate color, and I assumed no one else did, either. But I've been wondering if the way I see colors are different, either more or less acutely than other people do. I don't know if other people see indigo better than I do, but I always assumed other people didn't. I think I may be "colorblind" to indigo, which is an interesting discovery. I think I might actually be slightly colorblind, even though I always pass the "colorblindness tests" with all the dots making numbers and whatnot. The other day, my mom asked me to use the "orange" spatula, when I know for a fact that we have no orange spatula, although we do have one that is bright red, which is the one she was talking about. Another example is that I sometimes struggle with "blue-green" colors. A lot of times, when people ask me to identify the color (which happens more often than you would think), I say that it's blue, but other people say it's green. I've had some confusing experiences with that. It never occurred to me, until recently, that I might be colorblind. Which would explain why I get so distressed when I try to "harmonize" my outfits. I usually end up wearing one color and black, instead of another color, because I'm too worried that what I've chosen doesn't match.
In my reading, autistic people are either over- or under-sensitive to stimulants. I always assumed I was over-sensitive (I can hear better, feel better, smell better than most people around me), especially because when I'm stressed out, I need to get rid of as many stimulants as possible (to calm down, I lock myself in a pitch-black room. I would cover my ears, too, but it produces too much noise when I touch my ears). But maybe, when it comes to color, anyway, I'm actually under-sensitive. That I perceive light better than others (and can be aggravated by busy patterns and bright colors), but I'm not so sensitive to color. This is all very fascinating.
I've heard of people who had a brain injury who could "see" sound. I didn't understand how that was supposed to work, but now I get it. This is so cool.
And your skin is receptive to light, too. For instance, up until recently, I couldn't sleep with the light on, even if I had my eyes covered: I always felt too hot, even though it's not technically that big of a difference. Even now, if I try to nap during the day, it gives me a headache. Our skin is sensitive to energy (heat), which is often (possibly always, but I have no research to back that up) expressed in waves. So, your skin can "hear" and "see," as well. I've heard of one deaf woman who can hear quite well by putting her hand on a speaker. I don't know how acute that hearing is (or how common this type of thing is), but she could follow the conversations on TV pretty well. And I remember, a long time ago, watching a film where a blind woman could feel color with her hands (but this was a fictional movie, and I don't know if that actually happens). All of this seems more possible now, and it's all just so very fascinating.
Plus, if you think about it this way, that higher frequency=more energy, this means that high frequency waves travel faster and farther than low frequency waves. As in, light is faster than sound, as in that's why I can see my socks lying on the floor over there, but I can't hear them, even though sound is a wider range of waves, and therefore is statistically more common than light.
I hope you appreciate how blown my mind is right now.
Penny
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